The DAI payment gateway for decentralized commerce

Why accept DAI

DAI is the largest decentralized stablecoin — the one no private company issues, no bank deposit backs, and no central authority can freeze. For a merchant whose customers value censorship resistance and on-chain transparency, DAI reaches a segment that USDT and USDC structurally cannot.

The audience that pays in DAI is small but specific. It is overwhelmingly DeFi-native — power users of Aave, Compound, Curve, MakerDAO itself; long-term Ethereum holders; privacy-conscious developers; protocols paying out in stablecoin that prefer not to depend on Circle's or Tether's compliance posture. If your product overlaps with any of those user segments (developer tools, on-chain infrastructure, DAO services, DeFi-adjacent SaaS), enabling DAI signals alignment.

Paymos accepts DAI on Ethereum mainnet only. This is intentional. Bridged DAI on Polygon, BSC, Arbitrum and other chains exists, but it is structurally a different asset — wrapped by third-party bridges, not redeemable through MakerDAO's primary mechanism. We only accept the canonical DAI to keep the redemption story honest.

What DAI is

DAI is issued by the MakerDAO protocol — a decentralized autonomous organization governed by holders of the MKR token. There is no Maker corporation, no CEO, no shareholders. The protocol's smart contracts mint DAI when users deposit collateral (currently ETH, real-world assets like US Treasury bills via tokenized funds, and a few other approved assets) into a vault. DAI is destroyed when the vault owner repays the debt and unlocks their collateral.

A few things that make DAI structurally different from every other stablecoin Paymos supports:

• Crypto-collateralized, partly real-world-asset-backed. DAI started pure-ETH-collateralized and broadened its backing over 2021-2024 to include tokenized US Treasuries through vehicles like Monetalis Clydesdale and BlockTower Andromeda . A large share of the backing now flows into those RWA structures, alongside ETH and USDC held in the Peg Stability Module, and the Treasury yield they earn funds the savings rate . The exact mix shifts with governance, so read the protocol's live vault stats for the current breakdown.
• No central freeze authority. DAI has no equivalent of Circle's blacklist call. Once minted, no entity can stop an address from sending or receiving it. Governance can pause new minting against a given collateral type, or wind the whole protocol down through "Emergency Shutdown" — both are heavily-governed processes, not a single unilateral switch.
• Backed by overcollateralization, not 1
  reserves. Each DAI is backed by more than a dollar of collateral, with collateralization ratios running roughly 130-200% depending on the asset class. When a vault drops below its liquidation threshold, an automated auction sells the collateral for DAI. That is a different model from USDC's "a dollar in a bank for every token in circulation."
• The Sky rebrand and USDS. In August 2024 MakerDAO governance approved a transition to a new brand, Sky, and shipped USDS — a parallel stablecoin that upgrades from DAI 1
  with no fee in either direction . USDS overtook DAI in circulating supply during 2025, but both coexist in 2026 and DAI still anchors billions across DeFi pools, lending markets, and L2s . Paymos accepts canonical DAI; USDS support is on our roadmap if adoption keeps shifting that way.

Governance moves DAI's collateral types, stability fees, and savings rate through token-holder votes. That makes parameter changes slower and more deliberate than a centrally-controlled stablecoin, and it shifts the risk to a different set of failure modes: governance capture, smart-contract bugs, and RWA counterparty exposure. Worth understanding before DAI becomes a meaningful share of what you settle in.

Networks where DAI lives on Paymos

DAI is canonically issued on Ethereum mainnet (ERC20, 18 decimals) — the single network shown in the panel above. Versions exist on other chains via third-party bridges, but Paymos does not support those, only Ethereum-native DAI.

Why no DAI on L2s or Polygon

You can buy "DAI" on Polygon, BSC, Arbitrum, Optimism — but it isn't MakerDAO-DAI. It's a token issued by a bridge protocol (Polygon's PoS bridge, Wormhole, Synapse, etc.) that holds canonical DAI on Ethereum as collateral and mints a wrapper on the target chain. The redemption flow goes back through the bridge contract, which introduces:

• Bridge-specific risk. If the bridge contract is exploited, the wrapper becomes worthless. This has happened multiple times in the broader bridge ecosystem.
• Different issuer. The L2 DAI you accept isn't backed by MakerDAO's collateral. It's backed by the bridge holding ETH-mainnet DAI in escrow.
• No MakerDAO governance. Stability fees and DSR don't apply to bridged versions; their economics are determined by the bridge protocol.

The decentralization premium that makes DAI valuable disappears when you wrap it through a centralized bridge. So Paymos accepts only Ethereum-native DAI.

So DAI on Paymos fits medium-to-large invoices best. Ethereum gas currently runs a couple of cents, so the customer's fee is rarely the constraint . But DAI lives on mainnet only, and gas can spike during congestion — a small ticket therefore carries more fee variance than the same payment on a cheaper rail. For micro-payments, point customers at USDC on Polygon instead.

DAI vs USDC vs USDT — when to pick which

DAI is not a "default" stablecoin. It's a specific tool for specific contexts. A short framing:

Dimension	DAI	USDC	USDT
Issuer	MakerDAO protocol (decentralized)	Circle (US corp)	Tether (BVI corp)
Backing	Overcollateralized crypto + RWAs	USD bank reserves + T-bills	T-bills + cash + secured loans + gold + BTC
Freeze authority	None (smart-contract immutable)	Circle (aggressive)	Tether (selective)
Networks on Paymos	1 (Ethereum only)	10	11
Typical user	DeFi-native, decentralization-conscious	US/EU regulated commerce	Global retail, CIS, Asia
Liquidity	Deep on DEXs and Ethereum	Deep everywhere	Deepest, especially CEX
Risk profile	Smart-contract + governance + RWA	Banking + regulatory	Reserve composition + regulatory

The right merchant for DAI is one whose customers already hold DAI. Almost nobody converts dollars into DAI specifically to pay a store — DAI holders are the ones who keep it for on-chain yield through the savings rate, or who prefer a stablecoin that no issuer can freeze. As of 2026 that savings rate sits in the low single digits, down from peaks above 8% in 2024 .

Pricing and integration

DAI settles at the same 1.0% all-in standard rate as every Paymos token, sweep gas included — accepted DAI lands on your balance, credited exactly as the customer paid it . High-volume merchants can request the 0.3% Enterprise rate . Pricing page.

Worth knowing: Ethereum-only support means every DAI sweep pays mainnet gas. We absorb that inside the 1.0%, but the operational margin we run on is tighter than for, say, Polygon USDC where gas costs are negligible. Pricing is flat across tokens regardless. Payouts settle in USDT or USDC to a whitelisted wallet — there, Paymos takes 0 commission and you cover only a subsidised network fee priced below what the chain charges. (See the pricing page.)

Integration: pass currency: "DAI" to POST /v1/invoices. The network parameter is optional — DAI lives only on Ethereum mainnet, so it resolves to ERC20 either way. The Widget SDK takes a fiat currency field; the customer picks DAI at checkout if you've enabled it. Full DAI schema plus code samples in eight languages: API docs.

CMS plugins shipped: WooCommerce, WHMCS, OpenCart 4. Enable DAI in the gateway settings.

DAI-specific edge cases

The 2020 Black Thursday event

On March 12, 2020 ("Black Thursday"), ETH fell more than 40% in a few hours and Ethereum gas spiked alongside it, breaking MakerDAO's liquidation auctions . Keeper bots on fixed gas settings couldn't get transactions confirmed, so many vaults were liquidated at a zero bid — their collateral claimed for $0 in DAI. Roughly 36% of liquidations cleared at a 100% discount, leaving the protocol with about $4.5M in bad debt that MKR holders covered by minting and selling new tokens . Liquidated users were later partly made whole through a class-action settlement, not by the protocol itself . The episode exposed how fragile a pure-ETH-collateralized stablecoin is under extreme stress.

MakerDAO spent the following years diversifying collateral — adding USDC, then real-world assets — and hardening the liquidation engine. The mechanism today withstands gas spikes that once broke it, but Black Thursday is still the reference event for what "smart-contract risk" means in stablecoin terms.

DAI's USDC-collateral dependency

Between 2021 and 2024, a large share of DAI's backing was USDC parked in the Peg Stability Module (PSM). At the 2022 peak USDC made up more than half of DAI's collateral — around 60% — which drew criticism that DAI had become a USDC wrapper, undercutting its decentralization story .

The Endgame plan deliberately cut that reliance by routing more collateral into real-world assets and other crypto . By 2026 USDC's share has dropped substantially but stays non-zero, so DAI still inherits some of USDC's centralization risk at one remove. The practical read for a merchant: if Circle ever froze the USDC sitting in the PSM — unprecedented, but not impossible — DAI would face real peg stress.

Emergency Shutdown

MakerDAO retains a governance-controlled mechanism called Emergency Shutdown, which would freeze new minting and let DAI holders redeem their tokens directly for the underlying collateral at a predetermined rate. This has never been triggered, but it's the protocol's ultimate failsafe. For merchants, the consequence of an Emergency Shutdown event would be that DAI on your balance becomes redeemable for a basket of crypto and RWA assets — which Paymos cannot automatically convert. You'd handle it manually.

DAI vs USDS (the Sky rebrand)

The Sky transition (covered above) shipped USDS as a 1

upgrade of DAI, and by 2026 both tokens circulate side by side . The operational point for a merchant: Paymos accepts DAI, not USDS, so a customer holding USDS converts it to DAI first through the Sky converter — a fee-free, one-transaction step at a fixed 1 rate . If USDS adoption keeps outpacing DAI, we'll add it.

What a customer paying bridged DAI should do

A buyer who holds "DAI" on Polygon, BSC, or an L2 holds a bridge wrapper, not MakerDAO-DAI — and Paymos won't credit it. Two clean paths: they bridge that wrapper back to Ethereum-native DAI before paying, or they pay you in USDC on Polygon, which Paymos accepts natively at a fraction of a cent in gas. For a custom checkout, surface this on the DAI option so a customer on the wrong chain doesn't send funds that never arrive.

See also

DAI is rarely a primary stablecoin — it's an additive choice when your audience values its decentralization properties. The natural counterpart for centralized US-dollar settlement is USDC; for broader global retail reach, USDT on Tron, BSC, TON, or Plasma. For an alternative US-dollar issuer, see USD1; for gold-settled invoices, see XAUT.

Frequently asked questions

How decentralized is DAI in practice?

Partially. The contracts that mint and govern DAI are on-chain and immutable in their core logic. Governance runs on token-holder voting — concentrated, but not single-party-controlled. The backing is a mix that includes, as of 2026, tokenized US Treasury bills held through centralized vehicles like Monetalis and BlockTower . So DAI is decentralized at the protocol layer but carries centralized exposure at the collateral layer — more decentralized than USDC or USDT, which are centralized end to end, and less than a purely-crypto-backed stablecoin, the kind that has historically struggled to hold its peg.

Can MakerDAO freeze my DAI?

No. There is no smart-contract function in the DAI token contract that allows MakerDAO or any address to freeze, blacklist, or seize DAI from a specific address. Once you hold DAI in your wallet, no governance action can take it from you. The only protocol-level action that affects DAI holders is Emergency Shutdown, which would convert your DAI to underlying collateral at a fixed rate — that's a redemption, not a seizure.

What yield does DAI offer compared to USDC?

DAI earns through the DAI Savings Rate (DSR), a governance-set rate funded by the interest the protocol earns on its collateral — especially RWAs like US Treasuries. As of 2026 it sits in the low single digits, down from peaks above 8% in 2024, and tracks the broader rate environment . USDC pays its holders nothing — Circle keeps the Treasury interest. The catch on the DAI side: the rate doesn't accrue to a plain wallet balance. You have to deposit into the savings module to earn it, which is a separate step from accepting DAI through Paymos.

Why is DAI 18 decimals when USDC is 6?

Historical. DAI launched as an ERC-20 with 18 decimals (matching ETH itself), which was the default for new tokens at the time. USDC launched later with 6 decimals to match Tether and reduce display friction. Both work; Paymos normalizes display amounts in our API regardless of underlying decimals.

How did Black Thursday and the 2023 SVB event affect DAI?

DAI has slipped its peg more than once, in both directions. During Black Thursday in March 2020 it traded above a dollar — buyers rushed to acquire DAI to repay loans and avoid liquidation as the auctions broke down . In March 2023 it fell the other way, to roughly $0.88, when USDC depegged in the SVB collapse and DAI's PSM was holding billions in USDC at the time . Both times the peg restored within hours to days. The structural lesson holds: DAI is only as steady as its collateral basket — when the assets behind it wobble, DAI wobbles.

Can I accept DAI without enabling Ethereum support generally?

No. Since Paymos accepts DAI only on Ethereum mainnet, you implicitly use Ethereum's confirmation and gas economics for DAI payments. If your project doesn't have Ethereum mainnet enabled as a supported network, DAI cannot be enabled either.

What happens during MakerDAO Emergency Shutdown?

Emergency Shutdown is a governance-triggered mechanism that freezes new DAI minting and lets DAI holders redeem their tokens for the underlying collateral at a fixed rate. It has never been triggered in DAI's history. If it were, the immediate impact on a Paymos merchant holding DAI would be: the DAI on your balance would correspond to a claim on the underlying collateral basket. You would need to manually redeem through the Maker protocol — Paymos cannot automate this because the collateral mix is not a single asset.

Should I tell my customers DAI is "more decentralized" than USDC?

Be careful about overclaiming. DAI is more decentralized at the protocol layer, but its collateral has centralized exposure (USDC reserves, RWA via centralized custodians). For most customer-facing messaging, "DAI is the decentralized stablecoin alternative" is roughly accurate but inviting nuance. If your audience is technically sophisticated, link them to MakerDAO's official documentation rather than making strong claims yourself.